She Hid Them in Her Lighthouse Cove Cabin, They Asked Her to Stay novel · Chapter 1 of 40
Chapter 1: The Rusty Buoy
Two hooded strangers walk into Mara's dive bar and a woman raises her phone; Mara covers for them and takes them home, until Odette texts that a man is asking for two Korean men.
The night two strangers walked into the Rusty Buoy with their hoods up, I was losing at pool to a retired fisherman.
It was the second Friday in October, and the whole bar smelled like wet wool and fryer oil.
The man who owned the place and the table was running the break on me for the third game in a row.
"Larkin, you're shooting like you've got somewhere to be," he said.
"I've got a woodstove waiting," I said. "It's never once beaten me at pool."
The door banged open and the wind came in first.
Two men followed it, both in black hoodies, hoods up, heads down, shoulders soaked.
Nobody walks into the Rusty Buoy like that in October unless they're lost or running.
Tourists come in wearing fleece and take a photo of the sign.
The shorter one checked the whole room before he checked for a seat.
He was thick through the chest, and he kept himself between the other man and the door.
The taller one headed for the back wall and walked straight into the hanging net of plastic buoys.
His hood slid off.
He had long black hair and a face so sharp and still that I stopped with the cue halfway through my shot.
I'm forty-nine, and I know a good-looking man when one falls into my decor.
At the corner table, a woman in a Blue Jays cap set down her beer.
She looked at him for a long second, and then she picked up her phone.
"Oh my God," she said to her friend. "Oh my God, that's him. That's actually him."
The little red light came on at the top of the screen.
The tall man saw it and went completely still.
The shorter one turned toward her, and I watched him decide whether to grab it.
That would have been a fight.
Rory calls the cops on fights, and the cops come from forty minutes away.
I put my cue on the table.
"Rory," I said. "Lights."
Rory Doucette looked at me, then at the corner, then at the two hoods.
He reached under the bar and flipped the breaker, and the whole room went black.
Somebody whooped. Somebody dropped a glass.
I crossed the floor by memory, found a damp sleeve and pulled.
"Walk," I said. "Kitchen door, now. Don't talk."
The sleeve belonged to the short one.
He didn't argue.
He took the tall one by the wrist, and we went through the kitchen and out into the rain.
My truck was parked behind the dumpster, where I always park so Rory's regulars don't block me in.
"Get in," I said.
They both got in the cab, which is built for one and a half people, and the tall one had to fold his knees up against the dash.
I started the engine and didn't turn on the headlights until we were past the harbor.
For a minute nobody said anything but the wipers.
"Thank you," the short one said. His accent was Australian, which was not what I'd braced for. "We only need somewhere to sit for an hour."
"Sit where?"
"Anywhere. We'll be gone by morning. We won't be any trouble to you."
"You're already trouble," I said. "She's got your face on her phone."
"Not a good photo," the tall one said. He had a soft voice and he was trying to make a joke out of it, and it didn't work.
His hands were shaking on his knees.
I looked at them, and then I made myself look at the road.
"What is it you do?" I asked. "Are you in a band?"
The two of them looked at each other.
"How did you know that?" the short one said.
"She said 'that's him' about a stranger, and you two dress like you hate being looked at."
"Also, your sneakers cost more than my truck."
"We're called Blue Hour," the tall one said.
"I'm forty-nine," I said. "My band is the Pogues."
The tall one laughed, one short surprised breath through his nose.
"I like the Pogues," he said.
"Hyunjin," the short one said, in a voice that meant stop.
So the tall one was Hyunjin, and the short one was Chan, because Hyunjin said it next.
"Chan, she helped us," he said. "It's all right."
Chan took a phone out of his pocket and turned it over in his hand, and the screen lit up in the dark cab.
Thirty-one missed calls.
All of them from a contact named Manager Min.
He pressed the side button and the screen went black again.
I took the left fork at the lighthouse road and the truck climbed the bluff, past the tower with its red cap standing white against the clouds.
The lighthouse closes after Thanksgiving weekend.
Until then I'm its caretaker and its only tour guide.
I live in the cabin at the bottom of its path.
I have lived there for nine years, alone, on purpose.
I have a woodstove, a clawfoot tub, a back room with a daybed, and a loft that nobody has ever slept in.
I have never let a stranger past the porch.
I did not know why I wasn't turning around.
Then I remembered the hands shaking on his knees.
I remembered the sound he made when the red light came on.
I knew what it was to need a door that closes behind you.
So I took them home.
I parked in the gravel and turned off the engine, and the rain came down loud on the cab roof.
"One night," I said. "Boots off at the door. Don't touch the stove, it bites."
"Thank you," Chan said again.
He said it too smoothly, and he didn't look at me when he did.
"We'll be out of your way by six," he said. "You'll never hear from us again."
I opened my door and climbed out into the wet.
My phone buzzed in my jacket pocket, and then buzzed twice more.
It was Odette, my best friend, who runs the Driftwood Cat Café and is never awake after nine.
The first text said: Rory called me. Tell me you're not in trouble.
The second said: A man came in right before I closed. Grey parka. He showed me a photo of two Korean guys, one tall, one not.
The third said: He left a card. There's a reward on it, Mara. Fifty thousand dollars.
I looked back at the truck, at the two shapes in the cab with their hoods up.
Then I read the last line.
I told him I hadn't seen anyone. What did you do?
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